


The Will to Live

by dandelionlily



Category: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Genre: Domestic Violence, F/M, Fix-It, Harm to Children, Unbeta'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-10
Updated: 2005-06-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 00:51:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dandelionlily/pseuds/dandelionlily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Padmé saw this coming, and she isn't letting Anakin go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Will to Live

**Author's Note:**

> Written the moment I left the movie theater, because after all the physical trauma Padmé went through (force-choked, birthing twins), Lucas made her cause-of-death "Lost the Will to Live".
> 
> That's BS.

“You don’t understand. We don’t need to hide anymore, Padmé. I’m more powerful than any Jedi who ever lived. I’m more powerful than the Councillor, I can overthrow him. We could rule the galaxy, you and I, make it the way we want it to be!” Anakin’s eyes sparkled, his hand and voice reaching for his beloved wife, the woman he had sacrificed the galaxy to save. The woman who carried his children in her swollen abdomen. He held out his hand to me.

I stared into those eerie, golden eyes as he spoke of power and coercion as if it was love and peace. I had seen it before, of course; I may have been blinded by love, but my hindsight was crystal clear. The moments when he promised to save me from death, or to force the Senate to see reason. Vividly I remembered the young man’s body trembling in my arms as he told me, in a breaking voice, about his slaughter of the sandpeople. He had killed younglings back then too, I recalled with a queasy sensation. It hadn’t been difficult to break the encryption on the live security cameras in the Jedi Temple. I had seen the terrible carnage even before my husband came to me with his strength and promises. Once more I had let my suspicions evaporate in his brilliant presence.

Not this time. I looked into his golden eyes and saw him for what he was. He hadn’t changed as much as I had imagined. I could still see the outlines of my husband within the monster he had become. I could even see traces of the child Ani who had taken me by the hand and promised me everything would be all right again. He still had the same arrogance, the same fierce desire to hold onto and to protect those close to him, the same fear of abandonment.

I would never trust him again, I knew that much. But that didn’t even make a dent in the strength of my love for him. The others thought my dear Ani was dead, replaced by Darth Vader. I knew better. Anakin was buried, but not dead. He would not die as long as the bond between us remained.

I took his outstretched hand, feeling the warmth of his body even through the black leather glove. He pulled me close, kissing the back of my hand, then the soft inside of my wrist where blood pulsed just beneath the surface of the skin. The hunger in his caresses was a reflection of my own desires.

“Padmé, my life, my love…” he whispered against my skin as he moved his mouth along my shoulder to the place where it joined with my throat. I couldn’t stop the slight moan from escaping my lips. His glowing eyes were shadowed, his impulses dangerous and violent, his sweat-dewed skin glowing red in the lava’s light. He cupped my face in his hands, staring at my features as if he was memorizing them. Was he still so afraid of losing me, even when he had me locked in his arms? He leaned down to kiss me on the lips, but I turned away. He needed a mother figure now, not a consort. “Padmé?” he asked, uncertainty and fear in his tone. I squirmed, and he released me suddenly. He said my name again in a voice as fragile as glass. His entire body was tense, waiting for my rejection.

I placed my hands on either side of his face. They were delicate hands, soft and smooth, perfectly manicured. My fingertips gently circled his temples to soothe his tension headache, watching as the telltale “V” of tension between his eyebrows faded. I guided his head down to rest on my shoulder, and was surprised to feel him fall to his knees and pillow his head against the curve of my abdomen. I stroked his hair and let his tears fall, cooing soft nonsense syllables.

His voice was broken and so very vulnerable when he murmured, “I-I was so afraid, but he said—he said that it was the only way to save you, and I… I can’t live without you, Padmé. I’m so very weak… I killed them, I slaughtered them all; I knew when they found out what I had done that I… that we…” He took a shuddering breath. “Jedi are—are relentless, Padmé. And I am nothing now, not even human, less even than a—a beast in their eyes. They’ll hunt me— hunt me to the edge of the galaxy to avenge the comrades I murdered.” His arms tightened around my legs.

“You’re right,” said a voice from behind me. My heart leapt into my throat when I heard the lightsaber activate. Anakin shoved me away, reaching for his own weapon. His face was twisted in an ugly snarl. I turned to see Obi-wan Kenobi silhouetted in my personal shuttle’s doorway. “This isn’t revenge, though. This is my responsibility to the apprentice I failed.” He walked down the gangway, his steps sure and heavy. The brown cloak fell from his shoulders, pooling on the ground. “I’m sorry it has come to this, Anakin. I take full responsibility for your actions and will atone for your sins with my own life.”

My husband’s eyes were wild with anger and the hurt of betrayal. “Obi-wan. M-master…” Finding not a trace of mercy in the Jedi’s fighting stance, his eyes sought mine. “Padmé! You—you betrayed me! Have you turned against me, too?” I watched his hand clench on air and felt a terrible strength crushing my throat. The ghostly fingers of the Force cut off the flow of blood to the brain without interfering with my ability to speak.

“Anakin, let her go!” 

I had only a few moments, a few words to convince him of my sincerity. I knew that denials would only fuel his paranoid rage. “Ani,” I gasped, reaching out to him with as much of a smile as I could manage. “I was afraid you were Sith, but you’re still my love…” Dark spots were bursting in my vision as I played my trump card: “Ani… our children…”

That caught his attention, and Obi-wan’s as well. “Children?” he asked in a voice tinged with awe and joy.

Relieved that he had released me, I ran a hand possessively over my belly. “I’m carrying twins. Ours, Ani.” The radiance in my husband’s face almost banished the dark shadow that lay across his eyes.

“Padmé, stay back!” Obi-wan commanded me as if I were a silly child who didn’t realize I could be hurt. “You don’t know what he’s capable of!”

I almost laughed. It was he who had been blind to his apprentice’s passions. As the object of his most desperate passion, I knew full well what he would sacrifice – what he had sacrificed – to keep me by his side. I still had nightmares of Anakin killing the sandpeople, every man, woman and child. Sometimes I was an invisible observer, screaming useless pleas for him to stop. Sometimes I was the dying mother he was avenging, weeping at the cruelty of his actions. And once, just after I had discovered my pregnancy, I dreamed I was one of the village’s women trying desperately to shield my unborn child from the vengeful lightsaber that sliced through my arm, shoulder and abdomen as a sharp knife through the flesh of overripe fruit. No, I had never truly forgotten the shadows and turmoil that twisted my beloved’s heart.

Obi-wan had never learned of the brutal revenge his padawan had visited upon his mother’s killers. Though they had spent countless hours training, though they had fought side by side in innumerable fights, Obi-wan had never known of what his apprentice was capable. The grief-stricken Jedi believed that his Ani couldn’t do such things, so the opponent he faced was Darth Vader, a traitor to the Jedi and cold-blooded slaughterer of younglings. In his desire for clarity and vengeance, Obi-wan threatened to destroy Anakin’s last ties to the Jedi and the Republic. “Why, Anakin?” he howled, his grief eroding his Jedi emotional control. “You were supposed to be the Chosen One! You were to bring balance to the Force!”

“He will,” I said, my voice calm and strong. I would not lose my husband or my dear friend in this encounter. I knew that my Ani would be lost forever if he was forced to kill the only father he had known, and Obi-wan clearly intended to take his own life after killing Anakin. I took my husband’s hand again as I offered Obi-wan the prize: “Together, we can defeat Darth Sidious.”

Obi-wan looked at me as if he was seeing me for the first time. Perhaps he was. Since Naboo had successfully repelled the Trade Federation’s attack, I hadn’t needed to show my strength. My old friend had grown used to the pretty, delicate ceramic coating, forgetting that I was steel inside. “You can’t be serious, Padmé. He killed younglings! I will not replace Sidious with a more powerful and terrible Sith Lord!” I felt a tremor pass through Anakin’s frame at those words. “Prepare yourself, Anakin; both of us will die in this place.”

“You think you can do it, old man? You underestimate my power! I am not afraid of the Dark Side. I have learned to use my emotions to gain– Padmé!” he cried, dropping his lightsaber as I slumped into his arms. I cried out piteously and clutched my belly. “By the Force, Padmé, what do I do?” He moved a hand so it rested over my bulging abdomen, but I pushed it away, afraid he would discover my deceit.

I gasped for air and stared up into his eyes, which I was relieved to note were once again the deep brown of a pek’kin’s belly fur. “The shuttle…” I murmured before twisting my face away and crying out again.

Anakin took a step towards the shuttle and was blocked by his mentor. Their eyes met, and for a moment I stopped breathing in fear that one of them would strike out. When I made another pitiful whimper, I saw Obi-wan’s eyes soften. “You should get her on board,” he said, stepping to the side to let Anakin pass.

I breathed a sigh of relief, then jerked and curled around my stomach with a cry as a genuine contraction rippled through my suddenly rock-hard uterus. I had barely taken a breath after the first when a second, even stronger contraction tore a scream from my lips. As the muscles continued to clench, I realized that something was terribly wrong. It was coming on too fast, too hard. I’d been there when one of my aunts went into labor, and it had started slower.

I writhed so strongly that it took the combined efforts of Anakin and Obi-wan to get me into the shuttle and strapped down. R2-D2 made whistles and chirps in obvious alarm while C3PO puttered around uselessly, repeating over and over, “Oh dear, oh dear me.” I screamed and twisted, trying to express some of the agony pounding through my womb. Anakin’s hand went to stroke the sweat from my brow, and I bit down on the fleshy part where the thumb joined the rest of the hand. Bit down hard and tasted blood. Anakin jumped and cursed, snapping something at a bewildered Obi-wan. Molding plastic was pushed between my teeth so I’d have something to bite, and the older Jedi quickly administered the hypodermic painkiller.

Within a minute, the drug had taken effect, dulling the pain but leaving my mind clear. The tension between former master and padawan was still palpable, but for my sake they had called a temporary cease-fire. It might become a lasting truce if I could keep them apart for a few months at least. I didn’t doubt that the crest of power my lover was riding would break on the unforgiving shore of regret, and if Anakin shed tears for the innocence lost this night, Obi-wan wouldn’t have it in him to refuse forgiveness.

I’ve heard the prophecy that Anakin will bring balance to the force; I wonder if that means restoring sanity to the Jedi laws. Man should not aspire to be an automaton without attachments to the world. What else could have drawn my lover back into the light but his attachment to his former master, to myself and to our children? I had already decided that we wouldn’t let him go. When we docked with the station and while I was rushed to medbay, I kept my fingers entwined with Anakin’s.


End file.
